This study exploits a new longitudinal dataset to examine selective migration among 1,500
Kenyan youth originally living in rural areas. We examine whether migration rates are related to
individual “ability”, broadly defined to include cognitive aptitude as well as health, and then use
these estimates to determine how much of the urban-rural wage gap in Kenya is due to selection
versus actual productivity differences. Whereas previous empirical work has focused on
schooling attainment as a proxy for cognitive ability, we employ an arguably preferable measure,
a pre-migration primary school academic test score. Pre-migration randomized assignment to a
deworming treatment program provides variation in health status. We find a positive relationship
between both measures of human capital (cognitive ability and deworming) and subsequent
migration, though only the former is robust at standard statistical significance levels.
Specifically, an increase of two standard deviations in academic test score increases the
likelihood of rural-urban migration by 17%. Accounting for migration selection due to both
cognitive ability and schooling attainment does not explain more than a small fraction of the
sizeable urban-rural wage gap in Kenya, suggesting that productivity differences across sectors
remain large.